Wednesday, December 29, 2004

EVOLVING CONNECTIONS.
In Boston, Steve Garfield is practicing his own brand of citizen journalism. His video reports at stevegarfield.blogs.com/videoblog are as local as they come, ranging from coverage of this summer's Democratic National Convention to a video of a downed power line on his street. At human-dog.com, run by Chris Weagel, a St. Clair Shores (Mich.) video producer, visitors can watch a spare, silent film showing an anonymous person removing a John Kerry yard sign from its metal posts after the Presidential election and taping an upside-down flag in its place.

Ryan Hodson, a 25-year-old film editor, specializes in videos that mingle the absurd with oddly touching insights. In one clip, she tours her house. In the kitchen, the camera focuses on a pot on a stove as Hodson describes the night her roommate tried to cook Dinty Moore Stew without -- as the camera pans up to recreate -- pouring the food out of the can. In another video, she created split-screen montages of her brother racing bicycles, showing him crashing, and then out ahead of the pack.

The trio are among the pioneers spearheading a fast-evolving grassroots movement. It's an amazing process to watch as creative pockets begin to interact around the country. Garfield, Hodson, and Weagel are all part of a Yahoo! (YHOO) group dedicated to video blogging that was formed in June by Jay Dedman, a New Yorker who works at a public-access TV station.

Friday, September 17, 2004

Steve Garfield, in his groundbreaking video blog, reports from several polling places in the Boston area that NOBODY is respecting the legally mandated 150 ft buffer zone around the actual polling place within which no signs or electioneering is allowed. Steve found sign-wielding campaign workers camped on the front steps and at the doorways of the polling stations themselves. Their reactions when confronted by Steve are worth a look.

Sunday, August 15, 2004

I've got a fast internet connection, a computer and camera. It's time to make some videos and share them with the world.

Up until a few years ago, the tools of video production were out of reach for the average consumer, people were still using dial-up modems to access the web, and creating a web page required learning HTML.

Thursday, August 12, 2004

Steve Garfield documented the Convention not only via keypad but also via Videoblog. My favorite piece is this one. Garfield reported from the very exclusive Blogger-Breakfast at the Bostoner Hilton Hotel. To stupid, he wasn't invited, but with a video camera in his hand he made it through security as a journalist. This is by itself funny already.

Howard Dean was a suprise guest at the Blogger-Breakfast and he had to talk obviously helplessly about Blogs. Steve's question if he is getting the whole think / understanding the whole thing was answered by a Blogger (Dave Winer): "Dean doesn't get it!"

Saturday, August 07, 2004

"Steve Garfield, a video producer from Boston, Massachusetts, has no problems with the medium. He uses his website to be a 'citizen journalist', which he describes as 'anyone who decides to tell a story and share it'.

Mr Garfield posts about two vlogs a week, on everything from beer and local human interest stories to an off-beat daily report from the recent Democratic convention. There are still only a few hundred vlogging sites on the web - compared with literally thousands of blogging sites - but Mr Garfield predicts that more internet users will get involved in vlogging once the technological barriers come down.

'As tools come out that make it easier, more people will start creating video blogs,' he says. 'The barriers to entry now are the number of steps it takes to get a video published on the web. You've got to shoot the video, digitise it, edit it, compress it for web delivery, upload it to a host and post it to your blog.'"

Thursday, July 29, 2004

Though a lot of bloggers were excited about candidate Howard Dean speaking at their Bloggers Breakfast on the first day of the convention, not too many quoted him from this comment: "I read blogs from time to time," Dean said. "Not because I sit down and intend to, because I don't have that much time, but because supporters send me e-mails with various blogs that they read...We have two people that we pay to read blogs, 25 or whatever it is per day."

I hope we'll see much, much more video blogging in the months and yeara ahead. Mark Glaser's OJR column pointed to Steve Garfield's Video Blog, where he crashed the Democratic convention party and has posted seven video reports so far. Terrific stuff.

DNC: Video blogging (vlogging) the convention
I just stumbled across Steve Garfield's video blog, including this post from the blogger's breakfast. TV folks may scoff at the amateur quality, but as blogs have proven, sometimes a raw, independent voice is just as compelling as quality mainstream programming.

Check out Steve Garfield's Video Blog. He's got speeches you don't get to see on TV, interviews with unusual people and a real insiders look at the convention. It brings to life all those other blogger's tales of too many people and not enough diet coke. (Notice how much it's just like any other trade show --- the trade being politics instead of software or shoes.)

You can watch a piece of the veteran's speech by Wesley Clark that I referenced below. It really is a stem-winder.

This is a very original convention blog. I give it two thumbs up!
Thanks! I thought it was a real breakthrough, that I could bring to life your text post of the Clark speech. A video blog post really lets you see what it was like to be there.

Eric of For the Ride says:

Very Good Convention Blogging

I've already given out my convention blogger award to Fafblog, but Very Good convention blogging is being done by Steve Garfield on his video blog. As I wrote in his comments, I was beginning to feel like Steve Gilliard about convention blogging, but his videos were good and informative (and avoided repeating memes like "Clinton really is a rock star.")
I'm glad I can make some videos that give people a feel for being here in Boston.

While most bloggers are content posting text and a few poor-quality photos, Steve Garfield has been video blogging the convention.

Garfield tells CyberJournalist.net why:

Video Blogging gives the viewer more information than a text blog. I've been experimenting with video blogging since the first of the year and thought that the DNC would be a great week to go out and practice some Citizen Journalism.

For giving the reader/viewer a sense of what happened, the video post is much more effective.

People are really excited about seeing things that the major media outlets are not showing.

Take for example the Wes Clark speech. I was there and felt the hall erupt with enthusiasm after he spoke about the flag. Digby had linked to the Salon article, which I could only read a portion of since it required a subscription, which told you about what happened, but my video actually showed the excitement and I think it really comes through.

With bloggers, or web journal writers given press passes to the political conventions for the first time ever this year, one web writer took it a step further. Steve Garfield chronicled the Democratic Convention with text and video. You can watch all of his video blog reports online.

There's no better way to learn than by examining great work. Here's some of the best ever done.

Thanks Jonathan!

I'm working hard to post at least one new video a day to my Video Blog.

Video Blogging isn't as easy as posting text and pictures from your cell phone, but by doing a project like this, I hope to help us all figure out the easiest way to get video on a blog.posted by Steve Garfield 6:01 AM

Tuesday, July 27, 2004

I'm filing video blog reports all week from the Democratic Convention in Boston, over on my Video Blog.

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

I took two hours of video, five television segments, one radio spot, and nine radio station logos and combined them all into an exciting three minute video highlighting the Cuervo Rockin' de Mayo event that was held earlier this year.

Jessica K. of AMP had this to say at the end of the project:

The video looks great and we really appreciated all the time and effort you put into it. I will definitely be in touch for future projects!

The end product was delivered on CD as .mov and .mpg files and on VHS.

Monday, May 31, 2004

As seen in TIME Magazine ASIAIf you missed it the first time, the article featuring me, See Me, Blog Me, just came out in Asia:

Boston-based music-video producer Steve Garfield, 46, is no ordinary blogger. Instead of simply posting his thoughts online in a chatty weblog like millions of others around the world, he links a Canon GL2 digital video camera to his laptop and uploads short clips of protest rallies, traffic short-cuts and even news events onto his personal Internet site.

Garfield belongs to a small but growing group of video bloggers, or vloggers, who are turning the Web into a medium in which it's possible that someday anyone could mount original programming, bypassing the usual broadcast networks and cable outlets. "My last entry was a news story about a local ice rescue, and this July I'm going to cover the Democratic Convention," says Garfield, who posts one or two new clips every month. "With cheaper digital cameras and cell phones that can also shoot video, more and more regular people like me will start becoming citizen journalists."

Now I'm waiting for the Today show to call.posted by Steve Garfield 4:53 AM

Friday, May 21, 2004

High Definition TelevisionI'm working with Moovlab Boston, producing and editing content for MOOV hd, a non-narrative motion video and conceptual arts channel devoted to the programming of creative video art.